Watching empire slow rock the ‘weakness shift®’

First, the Quad, and we will end with the Quad as well.

Announced early in 2023, the so-called quad was set together with great fanfare.  It is educational to read the old 2023 early Quad Leader’s statements from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio of Japan, and President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. of the United States.   They were going to create a free and open Indo-Pacific that is inclusive and resilient.  They were going to support the region’s development, stability, and prosperity through their positive, practical agenda. They will be transparent and respect the leadership of regional institutions, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), and the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA).

So, what happened?  The same as with the naval coalition Operation Prosperity Guardian, which the US and the UK tried to pull together to defend Red Sea shipping from Yemenite attacks.  And soon, the invitees, the coalition members, became visibly absent, sending perhaps an officer or something or somebody small.  So, it is at this stage not effective or active and when Iran sent an old warship into the area, Operation Prosperity Guardian became very quiet.

Currently, the big shippers are not using the transit. Danish shipping giant Maersk ’s decision on Tuesday to pause Red Sea and Gulf of Aden transits until further notice underscores the difficulty for the U.S.-led initiative, called Operation Prosperity Guardian. U.S. Navy helicopters, returning fire, sank three of the four Houthi boats that attacked the Maersk Hangzhou over the weekend, the U.S. military said.

Commercial ships are moving away from the Red Sea and instead going around the Cape of Good Hope says analytics provider MarineTraffic, triggering an increase in container rates from Shanghai.  In addition, South African ports are crowded and jampacked which makes the transit time even longer as the cargo carriers must wait their turn, or pay up for an earlier slot.

So far, the situation has affected $225 billion in trade, according to calculations. Overall, freight carrier Kuehne+Nagel said, it’s impacted 330 vessels. The total capacity is estimated at 4.5 million containers, or 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs). The value of a container bound for the Suez is $50,000, according to freight consultancy MDS Transmodal.  Global trade data provider Kpler said the number of ships abandoning the route jumped to 124 this week from 55 last week, and from 18 a month ago. To be sure, though, there’s been a modest increase in container ships in the Red Sea, with 21 on Tuesday, up from 16 on Dec. 26.  (These are the allowed traffic or we can say the non-western traffic).  “Simultaneously, our analysis of traffic through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait for all vessels combined reveals a consistent downward trend in crossings for both northbound and southbound vessels,” said Jean-Charles Gordon, ship tracking director at Kpler. (The strait connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, which opens into the Arabian Sea in the Indian Ocean.)

That raises the stakes for Operation Prosperity Guardian or this makes Operation Prosperity Guardian a failure another one. To achieve results, the task force will need a great deal of naval coordination, according to U.S. Navy Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies who served as policy director for the Senate Armed Services Committee under Sen. John McCain.

So we can take it without a grain of salt that Operation Prosperity Guardian will need a very long time to become effective if it ever does.  The UK is still bellowing:  “British Foreign Minister: The attacks in the Red Sea must be stopped, otherwise action will be taken to stop them. I will not specify the action that Britain will take.”  Of course the world sings .. So, whatcha gonna do?  In just now … Israel’s ZIM shipping company announced an increase in the prices of its trips from the middle east by about $1,000 per container.

We see the same tendency and ‘weakness shift’ (Amarynth®) watching the Quad.

Facing a renewed crisis as US President Joe Biden is not able to make it to India in late January for a Quad summit.  The divergences among the four partners are now on the surface and the question is:  What is the value of this Quad?  Why is it needed?  They wanted to contain China, but they cannot even keep to a schedule of summits.  From Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald said: “Stars not aligning: Quad summit in doubt for the second year running.”   Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had plans to host Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the other Quad leaders on January 27, but these were simply ditched, so we can assume they have nothing much to say to one another.

This is not the first time the Biden missed the Quad group. The previous Quad summit, scheduled to be held in Sydney in May 2023, was canceled at the last minute when Biden withdrew because of the US debt ceiling crisis, leading to a makeshift leaders’ meeting being organized on the sidelines of the G7 Summit in Hiroshima, according to the Australian media outlet.

The US lacks strength in promoting their Quad, they are snubbing meetings and summits and there is no priority here.  A clear case of another weakness shift.

We will be needing this little image a lot over the next period in our world.